Podman Compose

An implementation of Compose Spec with Podman backend. This project focuses on:

• rootless
• daemon-less process model, we directly execute podman, no running daemon.

This project only depends on:

• podman
• podman dnsname plugin: It is usually found in the podman-plugins or podman-dnsname distro packages, those packages are not pulled by default and you need to install them. This allows containers to be able to resolve each other if they are on the same CNI network. This is not necessary when podman is using netavark as a network backend.
• Python 3.9 or newer
• PyYAML
• python-dotenv

And it's formed as a single Python file script that you can drop into your PATH and run.

References:

• spec.md
• docker-compose compose-file-v3
• docker-compose compose-file-v2

Alternatives

As in this article you can setup a podman.socket and use unmodified docker-compose that talks to that socket but in this case you lose the process-model (ex. docker-compose build will send a possibly large context tarball to the daemon)

For production-like single-machine containerized environment consider

• k3s | k3s github
• MiniKube

For the real thing (multi-node clusters) check any production OpenShift/Kubernetes distribution like OKD.

Versions

If you have legacy version of podman (before 3.1.0) you might need to stick with legacy podman-compose 0.1.x branch. The legacy branch 0.1.x uses mappings and workarounds to compensate for rootless limitations.

Modern podman versions (>=3.4) do not have those limitations, and thus you can use latest and stable 1.x branch.

If you are upgrading from podman-compose version 0.1.x then we no longer have global option -t to set mapping type like hostnet. If you desire that behavior, pass it the standard way like network_mode: host in the YAML.

Installation

Pip

Install the latest stable version from PyPI:

pip3 install podman-compose

pass --user to install inside a regular user's home without being root.

Or latest development version from GitHub:

pip3 install https://github.com/containers/podman-compose/archive/main.tar.gz

Package repositories

podman-compose is available from the following package repositories:

Debian:

sudo apt install podman-compose

Fedora (starting from f31) repositories:

sudo dnf install podman-compose

Homebrew:

brew install podman-compose

Generate binary using docker/podman locally

This script will download the repo, generate the binary using this Dockerfile, and place the binary in the directory where you called this script.

sh -c "$(curl -sSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/containers/podman-compose/main/scripts/download_and_build_podman-compose.sh)"

Manual

curl -o /usr/local/bin/podman-compose https://raw.githubusercontent.com/containers/podman-compose/main/podman_compose.py
chmod +x /usr/local/bin/podman-compose

or inside your home

curl -o ~/.local/bin/podman-compose https://raw.githubusercontent.com/containers/podman-compose/main/podman_compose.py
chmod +x ~/.local/bin/podman-compose

Tests

podman-compose is tested via unit and integration tests.

Unit tests can be run via the following:

python3 -m unittest discover tests/unit

Integration tests can be run via the following:

python3 -m unittest discover tests/integration

Contributing guide

If you are a user or a developer and want to contribute please check the CONTRIBUTING section